Reconsidering Kant's Aesthetics

Until recently, it was customary to regard Kant as the thinker who gave definitive form to the notion of aesthetic judgment and who succeeded in explaining why aesthetic experience is something essentially distinct from other kinds of experience. The postmodern rejection of the practice of aesthetic theory, however, has done much to undermine Kant’s position vis-à-vis the arts. This course aims to re-examine Kant’s aesthetic theory from the vantage point of the art theoretical literature that preceded it. In an effort to better understand Kant’s contribution to the history of thought about art, it will seek to contextualize such “Kantian” themes as judgment, taste, genius, beauty, sublimity and purposiveness. It will also consider to what degree our understanding of Kant has been shaped by later modernist assumptions about the character of his contribution.